"Eddings, David - Regina's Song V2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)Dr. Conrad crazy, so I'd drop it on him every now and
then just for laughs. I was still commuting to Everett, even though the two hours of driving back and forth cut into my study time quite a bit. I had a long talk with Twink, and we sort of worked out a schedule. I'd visit her on weekends, but our weekday conversations were held on the phone. Dr. Fallon wasn't too happy about that, but headshrinkers sometimes lose contact with the real world-occupational hazard, I suppose. Renata's amnesia remained more or less total-except for occasional flashes that didn't really make much sense to her. Her furloughs from the hospital grew more frequent and lasted for longer periods of time. Dr. Fallon didn't come right out and say it, but it seemed to me that he'd finally concluded that Twinkie would never regain her memory. Inga Greenleaf, with characteristic German efficiency, went through Castle Greenleaf and removed everything even remotely connected to Regina. When the fall quarter of 1996 rolled around, Dr. Conrad decided that it was time for me to get my feet wet on the front side of the classroom, so he bullied me into applying for a graduate teaching assistantship, the academic equivalent of slavery. We didn't pick cotton; Expository Writing, and it definitely ex-posed the nearly universal incompetence of college freshmen. I soon reached the point where I was absolutely certain that if I saw, ". . . in my opinion, I think that . . ." one more time, I'd be joining Twinkie in the bughouse. I endured two quarters of Expository Writing. But when the spring quarter of 1997 rolled around, I tackled my thesis and I demonstrated-to my own satisfaction, at least-that Billy Budd was a seagoing variation of Paradise Regained, with Billy and the evil master-at- arms, Mr. Claggart, contending with each other for the soul of Captain were. Since Billy was the hands-down winner, Melville's little parable was not the tragedy it's commonly believed to be. My thesis ruffled a few feathers in the department, and that was enough to get my doctoral candidacy approved and my MA signed, sealed, and delivered. When Twink heard that I was now a Master of Arts, she launched into an overdone imitation of Renfield in the original Dracula movie. I got a little tired of that "Yes, Master! Yes, Master!" business, but Twinkie had a lot of fun with it, so what the hell? I took the summer of '97 off. I could have taken a couple of courses during summer quarter, but I needed |
|
|